The best plugins for your WordPress events calendar

Events calendar plugins are a great way to show off upcoming events – either to promote events organized by you or to give readers additional value with useful information about events relevant to their interests. I’ve tried quite a few events calendar plugins and I know it’s really hard to find a solution that works for your particular needs. Here you’ll see five of the best event plugins for WordPress that I have found.

This is the hands-down best solution I have ever used. The design is simple and the functionality is very versatile. The free option of the plugin gives you a lot of freedom – you can add a long-form description of the event, tags, location map, venue, organizer and ticket price information, a link to the event website and much more. You can store venue and organizer information and reuse it, which is quite handy and saves lots of time. Events Calendar Pro (starting at $65) allows for recurring events, additional fields and support for WooCommerce, if you want to sell tickets. Design-wise, The Events Calendar will fit into any website, as it’s really clean and minimalist. You can make additional changes to the CSS through The Events Calendar User CSS plugin.

The plugin, developed by Timely, is one of the most often used solutions there is. It comes pre-loaded with three calendar themes and lets you add time and date, location, ticket cost, organizer info, tags and event description. Although it’s very versatile and you can change colors and fonts straight from the plugin options, I still don’t like the preset design of event pages and the calendar widget and I can’t be bothered to go about changing it – if you are able to make some design changes, then All-in-One Event Calendar will be a great solution for you. The paid version includes many additional options and access to premium add-ons, so if you’re serious about your events, you should check those out, as well.

This is an easy to use solution to start with, having everything you’ll need. There are four calendar views, a customizable sidebar widget, an interactive slider to navigate between days, months or years. The most distinctive feature is the event quick view option, allowing users to see more about the event while still being in the month view. The calendar has social integration to give your events a viral push – you can add Facebook Like, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ buttons. The Pro version (starting at $39) gives you access to event ticketing with PayPal, attendee management and other features. Still, although the functionality is really good, CalPress leaves a lot to be desired design-wise.

This is the best looking calendar plugin you’ll find. It has a stylish minimalist design and a great feel. The functionality is rich, allowing for color coding, adding featured images and Google maps, creating recurring and featured events. You’ll be able to feature events, add custom language text, while your users will be able to navigate easily through the calendar, jumping months, sorting and filtering events. It comes only in a paid version starting at $28 – and it’s worth every penny.

In addition to the options other solutions provide, FT Calendar gives you multiple calendars, import and export functionality and RSS feeds. As a supporter of RSS, I find the last point really helpful and this is why FT Calendar makes it to this list. There’s also iCal feeds, as well as multiple color labels, shortcodes and widgets. To use the plugin, you’ll have to pay $39/year – if you’re not satisfied, you will be able to get a 100% refund within 30 days. This is one more reason to test it out and see what the plugin can offer you.

I think that at the current moment there is no other calendar plugin option worth mentioning. The main issue I have with most solutions, as already pointed out in the paragraphs above, is that most of them are downright ugly and I don’t want to waste time and meddle with CSS to redesign the widgets. This is why EventOn shines out among the rest with its superior design. If you are not as lazy as me, Event Calendar is the solution to go with, due to its rich functionality and the freedom it would give you. If you’re still just trying out calendar solutions and don’t need a lot, CalPress will fit all your needs.